In the House of Representatives, the amendment proposed by the Convention was treated with still less respect than it had been by the Senate.[[125]] The Speaker was refused leave even to present it.[[126]] Every effort made for this purpose was successfully resisted by leading Republican members. The consequence is that a copy of it does not even appear in the Journal.

Although the amendment was somewhat less favorable to the South, and ought, therefore, to have been more acceptable to the North than the Crittenden amendment, yet, like this, it encountered the opposition of every Republican member in both Houses of Congress. Nevertheless, it presented a basis of compromise which, had it been conceded by the North, might and probably would, have been accepted by the people of the border States, in preference to the fearful alternative of their secession from the Union.

However urgent were the reasons for the adoption by Congress of the Crittenden Compromise, or the propositions submitted to it by the Peace Convention, the question now recurs whether the President in the meantime did his duty and his whole duty, in keeping a vigilant eye upon the proceedings in South Carolina and other Southern States. To answer this question, it is necessary to go back to the point of time at which the first commissioners from South Carolina left Washington without having obtained from the President a promise to withdraw Major Anderson’s force from the harbor of Charleston, or any stipulation not to send him reinforcements. This point of time is the 2d day of January, 1861, the day on which the commissioners dated their reply to the President’s letter of December 31st; a reply couched in terms so disrespectful and arrogant that by the unanimous advice of the cabinet it was returned to them as a paper unfit to be received. “From that time forward,” says Mr. Buchanan, “all friendly political and personal intercourse finally ceased between the revolutionary Senators and the President, and he was severely attacked by them in the Senate, and especially by Mr. Jefferson Davis. Indeed, their intercourse had been of the coldest character ever since the President’s anti-secession message at the commencement of the session of Congress.”[[127]]

The first event occurring at this time in the Executive Department, which it is important to notice here, was an application made by General Scott to the President, on Sunday, the 30th of December, by the following note:

December 30, 1860.

Lieutenant General Scott begs the President of the United States to pardon the irregularity of this communication. It is Sunday, the weather is bad, and General Scott is not well enough to go to church. But matters of the highest national importance seem to forbid a moment’s delay, and, if misled by zeal, he hopes for the President’s forgiveness.

Will the President permit General Scott, without reference to the War Department, and otherwise as secretly as possible, to send two hundred and fifty recruits, from New York harbor, to reinforce Fort Sumter, together with some extra muskets or rifles, ammunition, and subsistence stores?

It is hoped that a sloop-of-war and cutter may be ordered for the same purpose as early as to-morrow.

General Scott will wait upon the President at any moment he may be called for.

The President’s most obedient servant,